New Delhi, Jan 20 (IANS):The global PC market saw a 3.7 per cent shipment growth in Q4 2024, and over 25 per cent of laptops were generative AI (GenAI) capable last year, a report showed on Monday. According to Counterpoint Research’s preliminary data, there was a steady flow of PC orders from enterprises, which was driven by ongoing corporate IT upgrades before the end of Windows 10 support by October 2025. For the full year of 2024, PC vendors shipped 253 million PCs, up 2.6 per cent from 2023, thanks to both the impending end of Windows 10 support and the first wave of AI PCs in the second half last year. “We believe the PC market has recovered to normal seasonality and entered a new phase after the launch of AI PCs in 2024,” the report mentioned. AI laptops are poised to capture close to 60 per cent of the total laptop market in 2025. “Overall, PC vendors’ market share in 2024 remained largely unchanged. But competition among chip vendors in the AI PC segment is intensifying with the entry of Qualcomm, AMD’s growing traction, Intel’s downturn and a potential new entrant with an Arm-based solution later this year,” said senior analyst William Li. PC companies introduced several AI PC solutions in 2024, starting with models based on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite series, followed by AMD’s Strix Point and Intel’s Lunar Lake. Lenovo, Asus and Acer showed healthy growth above the market average. HP saw flattish growth, while Apple grew modestly after a weak first half offset by the launch of the new MacBook Pro in the year-end. The $1,000+ laptops, by default, will have on-device GenAI capabilities, which will also diffuse down to mid-tier PCs both in terms of hardware and support, accelerating the shipments of such laptops in 2025, said the report. The AI ecosystem on the software and application sides will continue to mature this year, with the Agentic AI proliferating, it added.